


Something different, something more

by most_curiously_blue_eyes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crazy Rick Grimes, Daryl makes it better though, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:29:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29884599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/most_curiously_blue_eyes/pseuds/most_curiously_blue_eyes
Summary: Rick thinks he might be going crazy. Daryl comes home just in time to help.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30
Collections: Daryl is gay/asexual so deal with it





	Something different, something more

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short snippet, takes place in Alexandria but ignores almost everything that happened in the show after the group arrived there. Hence the canon divergence tag.

Rick thinks he might be going crazy.

Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time. Not even close. Since waking up in this new world filled with the undead, he’s been dangerously close to losing it more times than he’s willing to admit… and a few of those times, he crossed that thin line straight into the throes of full-on insanity. He can own up to that. 

It’s never felt like this before, though. He’s restless, unable to calm down. It feels like he’s too big for his skin, like he’s being pushed into a shape unlike what nature intended for him. It’s been a good five days since the last time he slept through the night. His mind just doesn’t seem to slow down enough anymore, not when he’s all alone like this. He thinks, all the time, ideas racing through his head, as incomprehensible as they are terrifying, like nightmares - only he’s awake. 

When it comes down to it, he knows what’s causing all this. It started as soon as the group arrived in this strange new place, after all: Alexandria Safe Zone, with its polished houses and its people who haven’t seen _anything._ No walkers here. No cannibals, no psychopaths, no rapists. Instead, there’s a town straight from the world before, with its running water, electricity and grassy backyards, with its soft beds and its illusion of peace. Of all the things Rick thought they’d find here, none turned out to be true. He expected another Terminus. Another Woodbury, run by some sadistic megalomaniac. What he found instead is a suburb with kids running around playing baseball, the smell of cookies in the air, a pretty blond neighbor giving him smiles he doesn’t know what to do with. This place taken from a TV ad for a new picket fence housing community, back when those were still a thing. This place where Rick Grimes doesn’t belong.

He misses the road. 

It’s so wrong, to miss the road and all that it entailed. It was hunger and a constant feeling of danger following the group wherever they went, the neverending search for something better. Something more than just surviving another day. But those were simpler times; it was easy to just live day by day, one hurdle at a time, make the best choice for the moment - no need to consider the consequences in the far off future, because who knows what the new day will bring? For all they knew, there was no future… and then they found Alexandria. Or rather, it found them, and Rick still finds himself wondering, months after coming here, if he shouldn’t have just put a bullet in Aaron’s head in that barn.

Alexandria offers - the future. It offers stability and life and safety, but instead of giving hope, it just presses down on Rick with a whole new weight of responsibility, responsibility, responsibility.

He never wanted to be the leader. He would have - he would have happily fallen in line back at the quarry, had Shane been any different. Had Shane been, well. Good. Rick would’ve followed his cue, like he had many times before, when they were kids, when they were cops. But Shane wasn’t the man Rick used to know, not anymore, and he couldn’t be trusted with leadership. So Rick took it from him, stole it out of his hands, killed him for it; and it stuck, like a murderer’s mark, it shines through, thwarting all of Rick’s efforts to step back and leave the important decisions to others. 

He never wanted to be the leader, but he is, and worst of all: now that he’s it, he doesn’t know how to stop being one. It’s just a matter of time before he takes this place from its rightful owners, too, because that’s how it works. How he works. He takes and takes. He took it from Shane and then from Hershel at the Greene farm. He took the prison, and look where that got him. Woodbury, too, he took those people and made them his even though he didn’t know the first thing about looking out for a group that big. Then he tried to step back, finally relieved of the burden of leadership he didn’t want, but that was short-lived, and he’s gone back to taking, taking, taking. 

Hell, maybe he’s not going crazy. Maybe he’s been there for a long time.

“Wha’cha doin’ there, Rick? Sittin’ all alone in the dark. Shouldn’t you be long asleep?”

Rick jumps in surprise at the low voice permeating his thoughts, and breathes out softly, turning around to face Daryl. The familiar sight of the hunter’s bulky silhouette in the door to their shared bedroom immediately gives him a sense of peace. He used to question this feeling, a long time ago. Then he thought it was lost forever; when by some miracle he got it back - he got Daryl back - he stopped questioning. 

“Was just waiting for you,” he says softly, the misery of the intrusive thoughts from just moments ago already half forgotten.

Daryl drops his crossbow in its designated corner. Takes off his boots, slips out of his jacket. He closes the door behind him and, without hesitation, he crosses the distance between them. His lips find Rick’s in the dark and they share a breath of relief: Rick’s that Daryl is back, Daryl’s that… something. Maybe that Rick hasn’t snapped and killed everybody yet. 

Daryl is the only one who knows it’s a possibility to be considered. Why he hasn’t abandoned Rick to his own madness yet remains a mystery.

Maybe he’s crazy too, just in different ways.

“You couldna known I’d be back tonight,” Daryl mutters, moving on to press soft kisses to Rick’s jawline. He likes to feel Rick’s stubble against his lips. Rick’s been growing out his beard again, for him, because when Daryl saw his shaved face again after they arrived in Alexandria, he said it didn’t feel right. 

_“‘s like all that we been through, out there, all this time, it ain’t happened and we’re back to the beginning. All’s missin’ is a white t-shirt and a gun to my head.”_

Rick shivers when the hunter pushes him gently to lie down on top of the covers. They’re freshly out of the laundry. The smell of detergent is overwhelming Rick’s senses for a moment, until Daryl lies down on top of him, and Daryl’s musky scent: a mixture of sweat, leather, motor oil and old blood, pierces through the clean smell. It’s so good. So familiar, and Rick relishes the familiar. Everything else in his life right now seems foreign, but not Daryl. Never Daryl.

“I always know,” he says, though he really doesn’t know anything. He wishes he had some supernatural ability that would allow him to tell if Daryl was close, if he was safe, if he was thinking about him. He doesn’t have anything like that, though. Had Daryl not returned from his run with Aaron tonight, Rick would’ve simply waited for him still, alone in their bedroom, sleepless. He always does. Daryl always comes back, eventually. 

The day he doesn’t will be the day Rick loses it, probably. They’re both aware of it, and Rick prays it’s never going to happen because he already knows what it’s like to lose the crutch that Daryl has been to him for so long now. It’s not healthy, this dependency, but it’s something. 

It means as long as Daryl’s there, Rick can function as efficiently as he does, performing his newfound daily duties as constable to this community and keeping the peace. It’s a good thing, considering the circumstances.

“Missed ya too,” Daryl whispers into his skin, guessing what Rick leaves unsaid, and Rick inhales the other man, savoring his presence, his closeness, his warmth.

They kiss again, and Rick feels the hardness of Daryl’s erection pressed against his thigh. He groans, becoming aroused as well just from this sign of Daryl’s desire. It’s enough for him to know that Daryl wants him. This, between them, it’s not about being gay or not being gay. It’s got nothing to do with sex and sexuality, nothing to do with body parts that make it so easy to qualify it as something it isn’t supposed to be. It’s the comfort of knowing the other person - his other half, his soulmate - that he is still there, that he’s back by his side, firm and hot and _alive._

The first time they did it, after Joe, after seeing each other again, after thinking it was the end for sure this time and yet pulling through somehow - the first time they did it, Rick said _you’re my brother,_ and he kissed all over bruises and wounds, he kissed all over them to make the pain go away and replace it with comfort and pleasure. What he meant was, _you’re mine, you’re everything, you -_ and it went unsaid, but still understood without need for pesky words, because Daryl gets him, Daryl knows him like nobody else in the world. 

Again, like that first time, he checks for broken bones with trembling fingers, for new bruises and hurts, finds none, none obvious at least - still, he’s careful not to aggravate any potential hidden injury Daryl would never show him. With gentle hands he traces the imperfections marring Daryl’s skin, old marks and spots where the skin is raised and discolored. A picture painted by tattoos and scars, faded with time but still viscerally fresh as Rick’s fingertips run over the faint lines. Newer injuries, newer bruises and cuts are layered on top of the old ones like a reused canvas, and Rick wants to strip Daryl down to his bare bones, slip inside and wrap himself around the center of Daryl’s being where he knows both of them would be safe. He can’t, so he does the next best thing, and he kisses wherever he can reach on Daryl’s skin, holding him close and not letting go.

“Rick,” Daryl says, the name like a prayer on his tongue. It means everything. It means _I’m here_ and _you’re here_ and _always_ and _I need you._ It’s everything, and Rick wants to taste it, so he does, lips on lips, tongue on tongue, hands running down strong arms. Daryl’s hands find Rick’s belt, unbuckle it, open his jeans. Pull them down, and then long calloused fingers wrap around Rick’s cock, and. Rick _wants,_ he wants more, he wants to touch and to smell and to taste, he wants it all.

And Daryl knows, because of course he does, and he gives it to him. Just the way Rick needs right now, just the way he craves, Daryl takes control out of his hands and into his own, relieving him from the burdens of the outside world. He’s not a leader tonight, he’s not a warrior, he’s not a killer. He’s just Rick, naked and vulnerable for nobody else but Daryl to see. To take. There’s nothing else that matters in the moment but the way Daryl makes him feel; Rick lets Daryl do with him as he desires and in return for this trust, Daryl takes him apart in all the ways he learned since that first time. It’s slow, almost unbearably slow, and it’s tender, and so good, all of it, Daryl’s hands and Daryl’s lips on Rick, Daryl’s cock in him, Daryl’s soft words of reassurance, it’s. It’s a lifeline.

 _I love you,_ Rick thinks in the height of his orgasm, words he’s not ready to say out loud, but Daryl’s eyes are on him and Rick knows that _Daryl knows._ It’s liberating. 

Afterwards, spent and tired, they lay together, still wrapped around one another, sticky, sweaty. It’s too warm, but Rick doesn’t move and neither does Daryl. Caught in the space between sleep and wakefulness, Rick finally feels like he can breathe. It feels as if the world snapped into place, as if everything that was wrong has been righted by Daryl’s proximity alone, and all the tension leaves Rick’s body in lazy waves like the ebb and flow of the ocean. 

“We found another community,” Daryl whispers into the skin on the back of Rick’s neck. He presses a kiss there, affectionate after sex, uncharacteristically so for a man this unused to intimacy. He needs this postcoital closeness as much as Rick needs him; as if he fears Rick would just get up and leave him behind, or else tell him to leave. Every time he seeks to stave it off by wrapping Rick in his arms and holding tight, regardless of which one of them is more dominant during the act itself.

Sex is one thing, but this, this is something different. Something more, something Rick hasn’t been able to name out loud just yet. 

Burrowing deeper into the hunter’s embrace, Rick hums sleepily, an acknowledgement and an encouragement to continue talking both. He’s interest is piqued, but after such a long time with no sleep, he has trouble staying conscious to hear about this other community Daryl found with Aaron. 

Daryl chuckles and the warm puff of his breath against the damp hair at the nape of Rick’s neck tickles a little.

“Tell ya in the mornin’,” he promises. “Sleep now. I’m gonna be here when ya wake up.”

In another couple hours, Rick knows he’ll have to get up and don his leadership along with his constable uniform. He’ll go out there and keep everyone safe against a world intent on driving him insane. Not yet. For the moment, he’s still just Rick, and he might be going crazy, he might be collapsing under the weight of everything he’s carrying on his shoulders. But he’ll sleep tonight, and he’ll wake up tomorrow, and he’ll brave the new day. Lather, rinse and repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

As long as Daryl is there to keep madness at bay, Rick knows he’s going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I'm on tumblr at most--curiously--blue--eyes, though I haven't been very active there lately. I still regularly check it though, so if you feel you want to talk, come and hit me up!


End file.
